


caught in a game (with no idea of the rules)

by cartoonheart



Category: The Hour
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-06
Updated: 2013-05-06
Packaged: 2017-12-10 13:22:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,781
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/786490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cartoonheart/pseuds/cartoonheart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Freddie has always worn his personality like an armour; his razor wit and brash words are a shield against those who choose to underestimate or attack him. So one day, in her office, when Bel catches herself saying to him "I'd wish you'd told me," he is quick to bite back: "and what you would you have done?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	caught in a game (with no idea of the rules)

**Author's Note:**

> My second attempt at fic for this fandom! I hope you all like it.
> 
> Please note I have played a little fast and loose with the established series 2 canon. I hope you can forgive me.

Freddie's right - she does like Ginsberg. Bel had stubbornly hoped that she wouldn't; that Freddie had been wrong - but of course, he's not. When is he ever wrong about her? The _arrogance_ of that man. There are many ways, new and unsettling ways, where she thinks about how she could wipe that arrogance off the subtle curve of his smirking lips.

But instead she is alone on her sofa with a bottle of terrible wine and Freddie is across the city, reading Ginsberg to someone else. Bel doesn't want to imagine them, Freddie and Camille (Mr and Mrs _Lyon_ ), limbs entangled and hopelessly in love. She doesn't want to imagine the way he might whisper against her French mouth, the syllables he would gasp onto her skin in the darkness of their bedroom. 

Of course Freddie would like Ginsberg. It would appeal to his rebellious heart and call to his adventurous spirit. Freddie may try and pretend he has changed, with his new suits and new wife, but Bel can still see the cracks where the old rumpled Freddie remains. 

But despite all of that, despite their history, Freddie might as well still be in America or Paris. Because Freddie at a distance would be far less painful than what Bel will now have to endure on a daily basis. Still in her line of sight, but knowing he is lost to her.

\--

Bill Kendall, on paper, seems like he could be a suitable distraction. He is handsome and charming, but Bel can't bring herself to truly trust him, not really. He is still the competition after all, and there is something about the way he looks expectantly at her that sets her on edge sometimes.

But he is available and interested, and isn't Freddie, so what harm can it do? 

When she closes her eyes, Bel can still imagine whomever she wants.

\--

Bel wants to dislike Camille, with her delicate features, and the poetry that makes Freddie cry. Her overwhelming _Frenchness_. But despite all of that, Bel still can't find true hate in her bruised heart. 

Camille throws cups, according to Freddie. Bel can't deny that she has wanted to throw a cup or two at Freddie in her time so she can hardly not admire a woman who actually follows the thought through.

Freddie has always worn his personality like an armour; his razor wit and brash words are a shield against those who choose to underestimate or attack him. So one day, in her office, when Bel catches herself saying to him "I'd wish you'd told me," he is quick to bite back: "and what you would you have done?"

The look in his eyes pains her. There is a sense of challenge, perhaps even a reprimand, in his lightning reply. Everything about him in that moment manages to convey the depth of his disappointment in her. Bel is used to him being callous and sharp, sometimes even cruel, but Freddie doesn't lie, not about things like this. And in this case, he is right to ask - what _would_ she have done?

Bel thinks of the unsent letters in her desk drawer, burning traitorously, as she watches him turn his back on her and walk away. 

\--

She still spends an inordinate amount of time watching him. It makes her feel ashamed of herself, like she is some sort of moony schoolgirl that can't control her feelings. Bel has spent her whole adult life not being that girl, and she is damned if she is going to start now. Especially because of bloody _Freddie_.

Sometimes though, when Freddie hasn't mentioned Camille for a while, Bel starts to pretend that she simply doesn't exist. Her mind makes ghosts of the idea of Camille and Freddie and Paris and the Seine and it tells Bel that it was all just a bad dream. She builds a better story, one where things are as they were: a nostalgic world where he isn't married and she isn't a coward. In those moments, Bel tells herself that today she was going to take him aside and talk to him and finally _leap_.

But then Freddie will say something that destroys her carefully manufactured illusion. Bel likes to imagine there is a hint of regret to his tone; a way that he looks apologetically at her when he mentions Camille, a lean towards guilt. 

However Bel may also just be fooling herself.

She told Hector a year ago that she couldn't be a mistress any more. And at the time she had truly meant it. But Bel knows that given that opportunity with Freddie, if he was capable of being less than honourable, she'd take it with both greedy hands. 

However he's not that man. And until Freddie tells her something that she can bear, that she can't misinterpret, Bel won't do anything but watch him. All the while, her fingernails will bite into the palms of her clenched fists, hard enough to purple and bruise.

\--

The Christmas party feels like old times. The tinselled decorations are limp from reuse, and she and Freddie laugh conspiratorially in corners, while Hector drinks everything in sight. It is almost all the same, except Freddie is what is different. He keeps bating her, pushing her towards Bill Kendall in a way that he's never done with any of the other men in her past. 

He makes off-hand remarks about how much she loves children, talking her up like she is a prize to be won. To anyone else the comments seem friendly or at least humorous, but Bel can sense the hidden subtext and the jagged edges behind Freddie's words. There is history and mutual knowledge between them, and he plays on it with calculated agility. He knows her better than anyone and takes power from this wealth of information. He instinctively knows that Bel does not have the same ambitions that perhaps someone like Bill Kendall may have for her. 

Nevertheless, Freddie acts the jovial friend, eager to marry her off, to see her happy. But in reality his words are like barbs on her skin. They jab and sting and dig under the surface, aimed to annoy, to wound, to rile her. But for Bel, who refuses to openly react, it is a pain mixed with a slow dawning sense of satisfaction. She knows that this outer façade of his hides an undercurrent of possessiveness; one that proves that Freddie can't shake her, just in the same way that she can't (and won't) let him go. He may be sleeping in another woman's arms, but if Bel can cling to his mind and climb back into his heart, she can't pretend the thought doesn't please her. 

When Freddie isn't at her side, she still feels his eyes sharp on her back. It is an oddly reassuring notion, and somewhat comforting in its old familiarity. He is coming back to her, she can sense it. Nothing on the surface has changed since he walked back into her newsroom, but the surface is never what has counted, not with them. 

Perhaps all is not lost.

\--

The days, the weeks, tick on. He is the pulse and the lifeblood. She is the punctuation and paragraphs that give him structure. There is little point in hiding the barely-concealed game they are now playing.

She knows the heart of it now, deep in her core, nestled somewhere strong. A fleeting touch of his hand on hers, and there is a honest confidence to him that he did not have in the early days. Back then he forced and blustered and confused people with his whirlwind of words. He hid behind them and took power from them, giving him an arrogance that steadied any of the unease that he tried so hard to cover. Those days were fraught with learning curves and lessons learnt the hard way. But now, both he and Bel are a harmony of thought and process and chasing down the clues. 

They always had a partnership, something that was undefinable and unbreakable. That was until he had run away to America and left her behind. She knows that it made him better. But in his absence, she learned that he also made her better, drove her and made her feel whole. Only Bel hadn't realised it until too late that she had lost her tick, her friend, her right hand man, and above all, the piece of herself that irrevocably belonged, and always would belong, to Freddie Lyon.

But he is circling again, tentatively, slowly, his orbit around her getting tighter and tighter. The thought makes Bel breathless, but she won't break the spell. She wishes she was a better person, that she could push him away or try to keep her distance. She knows all too well the tension that a third person in a marriage can create, and isn't so blind to know that Camille is wary of her. But Bel has always tried to live life on her terms, as selfish as it seems. So on this matter she won't, she _can't_ , give him up. 

There are hints that he and Camille are not getting along, even though he doesn't say so explicitly (although his mentions of her are becoming less and less frequent). But Bel knows Freddie enough to know this much: his wife wants him to being something that he's not. And while he is halfway there and eager to play the role of unconventional husband, a rebel-hearted Ginsberg-reading crusader, Bel senses that even that is not enough for Camille. She is even more free-spirited than Freddie, which is intriguing and admirable on its own. In another lifetime, Bel would be perhaps charmed by her. 

But Freddie can't quite let go of the old pull of ambition that clings so desperately to him. He can't help but want to compete with the Hector Maddens of the world, to prove that he is every bit as good and as memorable. It is all that he has wanted for so long and has worked so hard to achieve. Bel knows that he can't just let go of the never-ending pursuit for recognition, to finally show the world that he is not the down-trodden boy who scraped his way through life at the mercy or the charity of others. He clings to the sense that there is a universal truth to be told and he is the one who must tell it.

Bel also thinks that he clings to the remnants of _them_ ; their particular combination of friendship and the unacknowledged possibility of something more. She doesn't overtly encourage him in her direction, but if her hand rests on his arm for a fraction longer than usual, she won't admit it. 

She feels like she should be pleased about these little hints of a possibly imminent marital downfall, but mostly she just feels a little sad that the situation ever got to this point at all. Bel thinks of all the small moments: the veiled truths, the half-recited poems, and how he had left while she stayed. So many chances, so many ways they could have been happy together.

But his orbit grows smaller still, and she lets it.

\--

Freddie keeps trying to push her away, towards Bill, and yet Bel keep fighting against him. Somehow she is determined to claw her way back, and tuck herself deep into the recesses of his heart. She can't help herself. She wants him to come back to her. _Her_ Freddie. Bel can make no excuses for herself, or her desperation to nurture the fledgling desire that now undeniably exists. Her only excuses are that time and regret has made her more self-aware that her best friend is more than that to her, maybe always has been. Bel is more than capable of realising how time has been mocking her, laughing at the way she denied the truth of it for so long. The truth that Freddie saw (that he always sees) even when she did not. Bel tells herself that she deserves all of this, deserves to know this sense of loss and pain - that what she truly wants is out of her grasp.

She always has the news, she tells herself, thrumming through her veins. But it is always better with him pressed to her side, blood warm and breath hot on her neck. 

\--

"Bob in accounts gets awfully jealous," Freddie says one day in the studio lobby, walking into the middle of a conversation as he tends to do and eyeing Bill with an expression that Bel can't quite read. 

Bel knows there is no Bob in accounts. Freddie also _must_ know that she knows that and she can't help but flush at his implication. He's been swanning around the office all bloody morning being brilliant and yet infuriating. At the moment she just needs to get away from him. Things are hard enough as it is, but Camille has been floating around too and there is a tension in the air, thick with her presence. The effort of it makes Bel tired.

But Freddie keeps pushing, pushing, pushing. The way he looks at her sears deep into her bones. Bel can feel that he still wants to drive her away: far enough into the arms of another man so that he can't reach her. But their old push and pull is still there, as much as she pretends she's ignoring it and he is trying to deny it. Neither are succeeding. Bel would have been a fool not to have sensed his discomfort earlier, with Camille and her perfect translation hovering around every corner.

There is a thread of truth that exists between them, between the cowardly producer and her brilliant journalist. They both know it now, their rhythm does not lie, although both are too paralysed or too tied up to act. 

And yet she sees the way the corner of his mouth still turns up at her, the way he spends more time in her office instead of at his own desk. He is the master of pretence and she is his accomplice. The word 'Moneypenny' trips of his tongue with such ease, the old endearment that continues to make her heart soar, no matter how much she tells the outer world otherwise. 

He could always see through her anyway. 

And while Freddie has never been an easy one to read, there is something dangerous that flashes in his eyes whenever they find themselves momentarily alone. 

All Bel can do is silently will him to act on it, even though the thought that he will scares her to her core.

\--

Camille leaves. 

It is not told as a leaving-for-good, or anything quite as explicit, but Bel _knows_. Camille cushions it as 'going away for a few days'. It sounds less ominous in her soft sweet vowels, but there is a mutual and spiky understanding there that neither woman will openly acknowledge.

"Look after him. It's what he wants."

Bel half-heartedly protests but it sounds weak even to her own ears. She watches Camille walk away and pushes the guilt down deeper. If she were a better person she would take responsibility for what has happened, for her tenacious attempts to reclaim custody of Freddie' heart.

Bel is not a better person.

Freddie accepts the news of Camille's departure with flat resignation. Even with his back to her, face hidden, she can tell that his mind is still preoccupied on the show, on the story, rather than his marriage. Nevertheless Bel does not sense any true distress from him in response to this news. He must know what it means; surely _must_ know, and after a long silence, he confirms as much.

"She says all I care about is the story," he responds eventually, matter-of-factly, in the way that only Freddie can. "The story and you." As he turns to face her, his expression is searching but honest, as if waiting patiently for her to say something, to leap. Freddie's always looking for the truth and in this case they both know exactly what he has found. A panic curls anxiously in the pit of Bel's stomach as he takes a slow step towards her.

But they are interrupted. Always interrupted.

Their timing has always been off.

\--

The situation is precarious over the next few days; both of them are preoccupied and yet Bel is still acutely aware of his presence, or his lack of it. She has so many things she wants to ask him, so many things that she needs to say, but first comes the story: they did always understand that about each other.

In those few hours when she does manage to get home and rest, she sleeps fitfully in her narrow bed. She thinks of all those times Freddie has been in her flat, of all those alcohol-laden opportunities when she could have changed the course of their lives if only she had opened her eyes.

It is too much. 

She pictures him as her fingers move over her body, betraying her. They graze and caress and finally find the perfect spot that has her choking out his name in a tangled twist of sheets.

Bel can hardly look at him the next day.

\--

Outside, a thick fog surrounds them, as if hiding their guilty secret and the way he places his hand on her arm. All she can think about is his fingers, and the way they curl against the fabric of her coat. Her insides twist with lust and shame.

His voice is low, and she can barely concentrate because he is standing so close to her. 

He misses her. He misses her _more_.

He is still married of course. That hasn't changed. But he is the first of the both of them to be brave enough to acknowledge what is going on, the dark game they have been playing. Her cowardice is confirmed thrice over and she thinks of Bill - safe, available Bill. She thinks of the fact that she _can't_ just start an affair with another one of her married journalists, especially not after what happened with Hector. As much as she wants to confess to her unsent letter and just _kiss_ Freddie, hidden by the fog and away from prying eyes, she will not have it be like this. Stolen moments, steeped in infidelity, like she is ashamed of the reality of them.

Bel tells herself that she and Freddie deserve better. But honestly, she can barely take the high road. She's been no angel; now, or in the past. The truth is that she's in love with a married man, and although he hasn't said it (yet), Freddie is in love with her too. Neither can be considered wholly innocent in this endeavour. In the past, these sorts of moral dilemmas would have barely registered on the list of things that bothered her. But this was Freddie, and she won't let him stoop to her level. She doesn't want to be the one tarnishing his unrelenting pursuit of the truth by tangling him up in lies and deception. Bel won't be the one to taint what makes him the best at what he does.

Bill is waiting for her. He is a relationship that is finite, Bel knows this. And the inevitability of that provides her reassurance rather than sadness. Freddie is anything but finite. He is endless and infinite and forever. It scares her. So Bill is an escape route, a temporary asylum, and her inner coward will run towards it every time.

With every step she takes away from Freddie, she questions her decision. She knows he is watching her as she walks away. 

\--

In the end, Freddie is right. Just like he was with Ginsberg. She picks the news over a man, and so she leaves Bill and goes to El Paradis. Deep down, she knows she is picking Freddie too, even though she'd rather die than admit it to him, or even to herself.

Freddie's triumphant grin is broad as she crosses the room, but there is also admiration in the way that he looks at her that makes her lean in confidently to kiss him on the cheek. It is an unfamiliar gesture between them, despite their closeness, and although it is barely a touch, she can feel the heat of him and the way he sways towards her as she pulls away. There is a tightening compression between them, pulling them invisibly closer. Her hands shake with it.

Bel feels decidedly under-dressed in comparison to the beautiful and polished Marnie, but the insecurity is fleeting. There is a sharp tension in the club air and Freddie is on fire with it. Bel can't help but watch him soar like a phoenix through flames. 

When the police barge in, it is almost a relief - like the world had finally come crashing down after teetering on a knife edge. Bel instinctively scrambles for Freddie, but he is hot on the tail of the story and is too headstrong to be held back. She watches him go because that is what she does; watches him as he ducks and weaves his way through the panicked crowd, his slight frame quickly dodging the flurry until Hector takes her arm and finally pulls her outside. 

\--

Afterwards, once they find Freddie, Hector drives them all home. Bel's heart races in her chest, beating a rapid staccato. Freddie twitches in the back-seat next to her.

There is the story, oh, _what_ a story. The story and, of course, him. 

Adrenaline pulses through her, a perfect harmony of him and her and the news. She can tell he feels it to, the way his fingers drum impatiently on the upholstery, the way he can't quite sit still. The night blurring past the car window is quiet and dark around them and they are so close to grasping it all and pulling it down around corrupt men's ears and Bel can't wait for that shining unrivalled moment of triumph.

The thoughts are too much for her - she needs to get out of the car, get some air. She asks Hector to let her out and insists on walking the rest of the way. Freddie offers to walk with her. 

She knew he would.

\--

Bel almost tells him everything right then, about her letters and her stupidity and that the events of the night had finally made her brave. But she doesn't, she can't. She doesn't know why.

So they continue in amiable silence. Freddie says a little as they walk. But it is clear to her that his mind is busy, weighing up their discoveries and the evidence, analysing the implications and drawing conclusions with swift insight. Her mind does the same, trying its best to ignore that nagging feeling in her gut. Their story rests on dangerous ground and involves a great deal of many important people. Despite the thrill and the idea of avenging the brave Rosa, the burden does not sit easy on her.

When Freddie does speak, Bel listens, just as she always does. She moulds his scattered thoughts into shape, marvelling in his brilliance, his sheer determination for answers. They navigate the darkened streets to her flat, a path well worn over the years, her heels clicking the pavement and Freddie's hands gesticulating with increased excitement.

"It's going to be brilliant, Freddie," she says smiling, turning to face him as they reach her gate. "It's going to be the scoop of the year."

"I'd expect nothing less, Moneypenny," Freddie answers, green eyes sharply watching her as she fumbles in her purse for her keys. "With you and me and the story, what else would it be?"

Those words again.

It is then, only then, that he kisses her.

\--

The excitement has made him bold, and time has made her want it, and so now that he is finally kissing her, it is a relief. Like an oasis in the desert, or some other appropriate poetic device. Bel wants to commit everything about this moment to memory; the chill in the air, his hand on her neck and how his skin is somehow still warm to the touch despite the crisp night air. The way that her toes curl in her shoes and how her mind races to catch up to the way his lips curve, tug, merge against hers. 

Freddie kisses like he talks; ferociously, passionately. He has a clever mouth, always fast and too nimble for most. He usually uses it to cut others down but in this case he has used it to render her speechless. 

There is nothing but them, hidden in the shadows, just out of reach of the street light. He kisses her like he can't help but not - and perhaps after this long that is all that it comes down to. Her fingers clutch against his coat, trying to ground herself before she loses her mind completely.

\--

It moves quickly after that. It is a breathless scramble and her jammed flat door has never seemed more inconvenient than right at this moment. He laughs into her hair as she struggles with the lock, the task hardly made easier by the feel of his confident hands against her waist and the knowledge of what comes next. 

They don't talk. For once, for them, words are not necessary. 

There is a clash of lips, of tongues, of hands. There is far too much clothing. Freddie struggles with the zip of her dress and hisses between his teeth with frustration before it finally slides away. He looks at her as if time has stopped.

Bel feels suddenly shy. It is not something she has felt before in this situation. But this is Freddie, and of course it is different. There is something momentous happening and her heart is pounding fit to burst. Bel can't help but notice that his eyes still respectfully stay above shoulder height, even as her dress drops to the floor and she stands there, in her front room, in little more than her bra, stockings and half-slip. 

His chest is heaving, his hair an unkempt mess, eyes steadfast on hers. He is so very _Freddie_ in that moment, a boy, a man, her journalist. She is more than an object, more than her body, to him. He makes her feel alive and so very precious.

Despite his earlier confidence, she can see that Freddie is nervous, although definitely not reluctant. He shrugs off his coat and suit jacket in quick succession, barely flinching as they hit the floor. Her hands pull hastily at the tie knotted at his neck. His top button is already undone (as much as he tries to conform, he has never been able to completely give in) and she watches how he swallows tightly as her fingers graze the skin there.

"Freddie," she half-whispers, almost a question. She doesn't want to stop but she also knows that he has some conscience, is technically still married after all. This is the point of no return and Bel won't let herself be a mark of guilt to him, if he isn't willing.

It is then that he comes back to her, his eyes focused and bright. A twist of a smile forms at the corner of his mouth and without hesitation, he pulls her to him.

At first, they don't even make it as far as her little bed, even though it is not far at all. She hears something fall off her dresser as they bump into it with some force, but she doesn't even stop to look. All Bel can focus on is the way his hands feel against her skin, those beautiful hands of his and the way he uses them to maximum effect, just like his words.

Her fingers work quickly against his buttons, too many of them, and he makes a satisfied humming noise when her lips and teeth connect with the bare skin of his shoulder. He has her pressed up against her bedroom wall, the surface cool against her back. She realises that she has never had Freddie so close to her before; obviously not like this, even in all the years they have known each other. For all of their usual lack of personal space, this is new and exciting and perfect.

He fumbles as he unhooks her stockings. Not from nervousness this time, but from the fact that he won't pull his mouth away from hers to pay attention properly. He manages in the end, and Bel tries not to think of the other women he has done this with. She's known Freddie long enough to know that there haven't been that many all in all, one or two others perhaps, discounting Camille and Lix. Bel certainly can't begrudge him that, would never, but an unmistakeable snake of jealously still rears in her belly, thinking of Freddie with other women, touching them like this.

It is a fleeting thought, as his hands trail upwards to her inner thigh. Bel can't help herself, she lets out a choked sigh. It is not at all for effect (as it often has been in the past, with others), but for the fact that she has wanted this for so long and the way his hands move cause such a sensation in her that it is barely containable. His beautiful fingers are curling against her in such a way that her head lolls back and hits the wall with such force that Freddie stops what he's doing. She half laughs and half-cries at the concerned expression on his face.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," she assures him hastily, "don't stop, please, just..." She kisses him again, revelling in the fact that she can do such a thing with no one to tell her otherwise, no one to stop them.

Freddie takes the opportunity to manuoever them to her bed, leaving a puddle of clothing behind them on the floor. The weight of him against her is warm and reassuring, the expanse of his naked back is taut and smooth. His messy hair falls over his eyes. He looks like he wants to say something, the way he stares at her, but there is time enough for that later.

They hastily shed their last items of clothing, and she feels him shudder as she curls her legs around his narrow waist, pulling him closer to her. 

"Oh Moneypenny, you are... _exquisite_ ," he murmurs at the last moment, the moment before everything changes (although really Bel knows that everything has already changed). She knows that her life will now be forever divided upon this moment, by Freddie, by them, by her knowing him in this way; by knowing his face as he kisses her, and how his hands feel on her. 

When he finally enters her, Bel has to hold back cries of relief, of physical happiness. Her body arches of its own accord; there is no thought, no plan. Freddie chants her name like some sort of prayer, like she might disappear and she thinks of how she first saw him all those years ago - that sharp-featured boy who started talking to her as if picking up a conversation they had started years before. 

Bel doesn't last long, not this time, and he quickly follows. It could hardly be otherwise given the fact that she had been thinking about it for months; for him, she knows, probably even longer. She presses herself into his arms, tucking her chin into the sharp hollow of his shoulder, and stares at him.

"Well, Moneypenny," he says, his voice rough but smiling, looking thoroughly undone, "I suppose I am a good compromise if you insist on having both a man _and_ the news." He grins at her like a Cheshire cat. She rolls her eyes in mock aggravation and pinches his upper arm in an attempt to wipe the smug expression off his face. Of course, it doesn't work, so she tries to kiss it off instead. No doubt he planned it that way. 

\--

The same taxi drops them both off at Lime Grove the next morning. This in itself is not an unusual occurrence, given that late nights are very much a feature of the job and Freddie, in the past, was very much a feature of Bel's sofa.

If anyone noticed or thought anything seemed different between them, they don't mention it.

\--

The day is busy. They still haven't talked. Not properly, not really. 

The darkness of her flat in the afterglow had not really seemed appropriate, and time for breakfast had been non-existent, given both of their determination to get to the office as soon as possible.

But now he is running off to find Kiki Delane, to deliver the story, and something about it all does not sit easy with Bel. He is so stubborn and in such a hurry, but she can't just let him leave like that.

"We haven't _talked_... about _us_ ," she hisses pulling him into an empty dressing room, even though she can tell from the expression on his face that he has no intention of talking about it now. He is fleet-footed as well as silver-tongued and they both know they are up against the clock. Bel doesn't even really know what she wants to hear but she just needs to know that there is a _them_ and that he feels the same way too. 

Freddie can read her like a book, she knows, a talent that is aggravating but in this moment is invaluable. He tells her what she needs to hear for now, and it is enough. He kisses her, and it is still like a new blossoming secret between them and she can hardly bear to have him move away. His eyelashes are so long that she feels them against her cheeks. She is only too conscious of the muffled footsteps going up and down the corridor beyond the door. 

On any other day, she would keep him there with her, if she could. But Freddie's a tour de force and she knows she won't sway him. In the end she doesn't even try. In the end, in truth, she knows that she wants the story just as much as he does. Coupled with the expression on his face, and the word _possible_ , she knows she will hold onto that fragment of a moment forever.

He flees from the room like a ghost, leaving her shaking in his wake. 

Tonight. They will talk about it tonight. They have plenty of time.


End file.
